Most good twitterers use variations of just one sentence; the sentence that begins with the words I think...

Basically, whatever you're doing, whatever you're eating, whatever's going on in your life, is fair game. You're walking down the street and you notice something... anything, well then there's a twitter.

I would love to know what you are reading, but it would be even more fun to see a great 1 or 2 sentence quote from the book (perhaps that's just too much trouble and completely negates the twitter goal).

And a twittering glare? I've never seen one, but now my curiosity is piqued...

Maybe I'm a philistine, luddite and cynic all rolled into one, but I've just followed Catherine's link to Stephen Fry's twits to see what's going on, and I'm not entirely sure very much is — and this is no disrespect to SF.

I can't see the point of this. I can't see what's not already covered by blogs, chatrooms and tattoos.

Am I an imbecile? No — I'll rephrase that. What's the USP of Twitter? The thing I can't get anywhere else?

Like you, Moonie, I'm still trying to "get" it. I'm neither a Luddite nor a cynic about such stuff but still... The only thing that keeps me doing it at all is (a) that a handful of people have chosen to "follow" me (not too closely people! stop pushing g*dd*mmit!) and (b) that I have in turn followed them... It's always interesting, but maybe I've been lucky so far in my followers/ees.

I will say though that I flat-out... umm... "un-followed"? is that the word? a stranger who seemed to be using it, like, 50 times a day -- 90% of it to promote her blog, directly or indirectly (not very convincingly indirectly, I might add).

Willing to keep rolling with it a while, see what develops. Since it's completely optional, it doesn't add a lot of pressure.

(Off to check Nathan out ..) thanks for asking this question Moonie - I haven't given it my full attention yet and have been a bit put off by the 'spam' type barrage of plugs from some twits (or should that be twitterers??)

The thing that perplexes me about Twitter is that blogging, even Myspace and Facebook, are forums for distribution of information or of networking. Twitter has such an odd content limitation that I find it somewhat pointless. More like saying things to no one.

Nevertheless, I'm on there. I really only use it though when I get some kind of email from Twitter to remind me about it.

I just signed up for Twitter yesterday after reading Tracy's post on Nathan's blog. I'm finding it extremely confusing. It's as if I'm just catching little snippets of hundreds of different conversations. Moonie, thanks for blogging about it. Maybe one of your commentors will clear up the confusion in a format I can easily understand.

I like the links people provide in Twitter to brand new blog posts, articles, photos, new books, reviews. I find it's where I get my breaking news, too -- from CNN, BBC, CBC tweets etc -- hot off the press.

I'm in the "what the hell, I just caught up with blogging and I-pods" camp. As long as you're going to talk about technology, how about a future post about Kindle? I'm curious about how many of the regulars here are using it. Just read a REALLLLY depressing New York magazine September article about publishing called "The End" and one of the many things that kept me up last night was wondering if digital/Kindle etc is going to help us or hurt us in the near term. (Long-term, it's inevitable of course.)

As for Twitter's word limits, I'm all for MORE words and more in-depth thoughts, not fewer words that say nothing...

Hi - I just blogged about Twitter yesterday because I couldn't figure out the reason for it. I find it amazingly ridiculous, for lack of anything more eloquent (or that would fit in 140 characters). :-)

The biggest advantage that Twitter has over other platforms is immediacy. It only takes a few seconds to send a tweet, and most people will get it within minutes of your sending it. This immediacy also means that things spread quickly as people "retweet" (ie., forward) interesting things. Companies are spending a lot of money trying to figure out how to make things viral, and Twitter is as viral as it gets.

If you're trying to use Twitter from the web, you're missing the point. Using it from the web makes it static, and Twitter isn't meant to be static. You really need a desktop application like Twitterific, which pops up when you have new tweets and lets you send tweets the instant they occur to you. (On the other hand, Twitter is probably deadly for anyone with ADHD).

If you use Twitter in this way, then you become part of a fluid, dynamic, and ongoing global conversation. Yes, some people send boring tweets, but it's easy to un-follow them. Twitter isn't intended to replace blogging; the two can work very well hand-in-hand, as you use Twitter to notify people when you have a new blog post. And if you use hashtags (basically keywords prefaced by a pound sign) your tweets will show up in searches, and you may get new subscribers to your blog in that way.

The best way to start figuring out how to use Twitter is to download a desktop application and start "following" some interesting people, to get a idea of the various ways that people are using it.

I'm on twitter, but not as active as I was in the beginning. It lacks the personality that blogging has. I like to read posts, and write posts...not be confined to three sentences. It's frantic, to me.I liked it when Obama used it to let people know where he'll be.

I would love if publishers would use it to announce when such and such an author will be in an area bookstore. I would be all over that.

I'm not loving it for networking.

However, I just joined Facebook, something I thought I'd never do, and find I enjoy the more personal touch over there. I'm very surprised about that.

Like another poster said, if it's a chore, then you need to see if it gives you a benefit somewhere...

I enjoy twitter because it makes me laugh. Lots of hyperbole. Lots of would-be rants (if only they could be longer). Hilarity ensues. (Especially if you follow Bill Barnes of the Unshelved comic strip--http://twitter.com/billba)

It's so completely random--you never know what people are going to say. (But I only follow about 15 people--of whom only about eight post tweet regularly. Any more and it gets overwhelming.)

I'll ditto the people who've already mentioned the desktop intermediaries (I use TwitterFox). I didn't really get Twitter until I went to the American Library Association annual conference in 2007. I got hooked because it was a way that I could instantly be connected with all of my Twitter-addicted friends who were also attending the conference. We made plans to meet up, talked about sessions we were in, mentioned which vendors were giving away things at that moment, etc. Being home from the conference, I've found it's a way for me to stay connected with all of my far-flung colleagues. I've got librarian Twitter friends in Australia and it's reassuring to see the issues they face are the same I face in the US.

The hard part for me is knowing what my ideal ratio is. I was fine for the longest time with not going above 100 people that I followed so as not to overwhelm myself. However, some of my friends moved over to FriendFeed when the fail whale was at least a semi-hourly occurrence. Also, I really, really want to connect further with the authors who follow me, especially the romance authors as that's the genre I also write in besides being a librarian. My issues are twofold, however, as I would then have two distinct, and large, groups I'd be communicating with on a professional level on one service, and two, I'd be following close to 200 people. Admittedly, my ratio of followers to following would still be around 2:1 which is the smallest I can tolerate.

At base, for me, it's all about the group conversational aspects which Twitter seems to do better than traditional blogs. Whoever described it as the water cooler conversation was right.